20 years of GNU

[ewx]

The original announcement. So how are they doing?

To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to
write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker,
assembler, and a few other things.

All seems to have been done for ages, except that someone else did the kernel that people actually use.

                                    After this we will add a text
formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of
other things.  We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that
normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including
on-line and hardcopy documentation.

Got all that but the Empire game (the what??)

GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical
to Unix.  We will make all improvements that are convenient, based
on our experience with other operating systems.

No argument there.

                                                 In particular,
we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers,

Yes and yes, though the version numbers are in the wrong layer and hardly anyone uses them.

                                                        a crashproof
file system,

Kernel side.

             filename completion perhaps,

Curious that this one should be uncertain.

                                          terminal-independent
display support,

Probably means termcap/terminfo; I thought the former already existed by 1983 but *shrug*

                 and eventually a Lisp-based window system through
which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen.

This one doesn't seem to have come out of the GNU project, though the feature is there in GNU systems if you're allowed count having just the window manager written in Lisp.

Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages.

Seem to be.

We will have network software based on MIT's chaosnet protocol,
far superior to UUCP.  We may also have something compatible
with UUCP.

This bit rather shows its age l-)

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

empire game

It's a Vax thing...

[simont]

... and conveniently available in a Unix form here.

Text-based turn-based wargame; very roughly, it is to things like Starcraft what NetHack is to Diablo. I rather like it, though I suck royally at it.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'll have a play at some point. I take it there's no B5 today?

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I can always win at it these days. I was thinking someone should update the UI. Much of it is tedious micro-management of snafu's, rather than strategy, but I'm guessing that's the same in what they're simulating.

[simont]

The UI could do with some work in places, yes. Particularly annoying, I found, is that you can't assign T as a city function; if you could, you'd be able to set up a linked pair of cities, one producing armies with a city function telling all armies to go to the other one, the other producing troop transports with city functions telling all armies to get on a transport and telling all transports to wait until full. Then that city pair would churn away constantly, and every thirty turns you'd be notified that a fresh full transport was available in city 2.

I sent ESR a patch to fix this oversight once, but as far as I know it got ignored...

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Yay, vms-empire! The vi of strategy games! I'd never realised it wsa so central to the GNU plan. Respek.